About

Parenting. Babies. Writing. Life. Culture. Craft. People. History. Stuff.  Look at the tag cloud and you’ll get the idea…

I’m Australian by birth, English, Irish, Scottish, Serbian, German, French, Belgian, Swiss by ancestry, so I have a lot to say about culture, or at least my own cultural identity.  I’ve done a fair bit of genealogical research too, and despite the fact I don’t talk to most of my family (because they’re a bunch of psychos with massive issues – don’t ask) I am fascinated with the people I come from.

I live in Sydney with my husband and baby son. I hate Sydney, but I’m stuck here for the moment (long story, probably outlined somewhere amongst my posts).  I want to move to Melbourne, or maybe Canberra… or maybe back to the UK.  Home is a hard place to pin down.

I had my son at home in a pool, and I wouldn’t do birth in a hospital unless there was a genuine need for medical intervention (ie. true life or death situation – not just fake risk factors like breech or post 42 weeks or whatever).  I’m also pretty alternative in my views around health in general.  I’m a big fan of Steiner education, and was Steiner educated myself although I also attended state and Catholic schools during my education.

Although I know a shitload of stuff about health and what’s good for the body, I’m really bad at taking care of my own body.  So I eat a lot of bad food and then berate myself for it.  It’s caused me to put on weight steadily since I was 14 and weighed 63kg (and thought I was fat – what the?!)  So now, nearly 20 years later, I weigh around 97kg.  Yeah, scary.  I’m tall, so I carry it well, but it’s a constant battle for me and I’m always trying to do something about it.  It’s more than just eating a lot of shit food, it’s a full on issue around emotional eating, which no doubt you’ll read about on this blog in due course.  Oh and I’m also a lazy bugger, always have been, stems from a combination of being generally good at most stuff without trying and a fear of failure.  Most people find it frustrating as hell.

I write. A lot. In fact I’m one of those people who sends emails that you need an entire afternoon pretending to do work to get through, and then have to reply in chapters. I once had a friend reply to one of my lengthy emails saying, ‘no offence but I just haven’t got enough time to read your email’. Point taken, no offence taken. It’s what I do, and I totally get that most people don’t want to sit around reading stuff about me that goes on and on and repeats the same thing in many different ways. But some people can handle it. And for some reason I can’t really help it. So that’s why I have a blog.  And that’s why I plan to be the author of several novels in the future.